A roundabout trip to the Vattakottai area and back to the jetty will cost one Rs 450 for air-conditioned seats and Rs 350 for regular seats. The entire boat ride would be for a distance of 6.5 nautical miles and subject to weather conditions, officials said. Each boat will make four to five trips a day.

Tourists visiting Kanyakumari can now have a 45-minute to an hour’s boat ride in the sea from the Poompuhar Shipping Corporation’s jetty other than the customary trip to Vivekananda Rock and Thiruvalluvar Statue. PWD minister E V Velu on Wednesday launched two such ferry services, Thiruvalluvar and Thamirabarani, from the jetty.

The boats would leave the jetty and sail through Chinnamuttom to the Vattakottai area from where the Vattakottai Fort on land could be spotted. The 18th-century fort was constructed by Travancore kings and remodified as a naval defense fort by Dutch captain Eustachius De Lennoy who was at the service of the kingdom.

A roundabout trip to the Vattakottai area and back to the jetty will cost one Rs 450 for air-conditioned seats and Rs 350 for regular seats. The entire boat ride would be for a distance of 6.5 nautical miles and subject to weather conditions, officials said. Each boat will make four to five trips a day.

Boat rides into the sea from Kanyakumari have been a long-pending demand of the local people. The tourism department bought these boats for Rs 8.24 crore and handed them over to Poompuhar Shipping Corporation in 2021. The number of boats at the jetty has now gone up to five with three of them catering to the trips to Vivekananda Rock and Thiruvalluvar Statue. While the Thamirabarani boat is fully air-conditioned with 75 seats, Thiruvalluvar has an air-conditioned cabin with 19 seats and 138 non-air-conditioned regular seats. Officials said that the corporation will plan further on increasing the rides and providing more amenities like an additional jetty based on the demand.

Thangaraj, he also launched the works of expanding the Vivekananda Rock jetty for 100 metres at Rs 10 crore. Work was also launched for laying a glass bridge between Thiruvalluvar Statue and Vivekananda Rock at a cost of Rs 37 crore. Kanyakumari collector P N Sridhar, Nagercoil mayor R Mahesh, Colachel MLA J G Prince, Killiyoor MLA S Rajeshkumar and officials were present at these events.